Thus, these three considerations—and others—establish that what he stated concerning the Necessary Existent is realized only in the mind, not in external reality.

This, then, is the position of those who qualified it in terms of privative features.

They have a third position: unrestricted existence considered without (1) unrestrictedness being stipulated, which they call the natural universal. In external reality, however, this can exist only as something determinate, and so it is of the same kind as the two preceding positions. Some of them suppose that it subsists in external reality and forms part of determinate things (2). Thus the necessary existence that brings everything else into being would be either an accident inhering in created things or a part of them. The Necessary Existent would consequently depend upon the contingent, either as an accident inhering in it or as one of its parts. This is analogous to animality in animals: animality does not create the animal, nor does humanity bring the human being into existence. A thing’s part or accident cannot be its creator; rather, its creator is distinct and separate from it. Its part and its accident are contained within it, and what is contained within a thing cannot be what brings the whole of it into being (3).

The way they describe the Lord of the worlds makes it impossible (4) for Him to be the Creator (5) of any existent thing, let alone the Creator of everything. These matters are discussed at length elsewhere (6).